The Black Dahlia
by AcidBubblewrap
Summary: "Will it hurt?" My voice sounds curious instead of actually wary or scared... "More than anything you've ever felt before" He speaks truthfully, because what is Claude if not bluntly honest. Warnings inside


**Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue  
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**Warnings: Pre-teen insanity, fluff(my kind of fluff, not typical yaoi fluff which I really can't take- sorry) implied sadism, nudity, mature themes- you know, typical Kuroshitsuji stuff. English is not my native language (Just a heads up, in case it's needed)…and just in case you were looking for some smutt- this doesn't have any (lol, another heads up, in case it's needed)**

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**The Black Dahlia**

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It's not pain I love.

…

_No_

Loving pain sounds too shallow and catalogued. I could never use such cheap words to describe my personality, it would only take away from the real intensity of my feelings.

If you love receiving pain, you're masochistic. If you love inducing pain, you're a sadist.

Neither is my case, so who is what to label me with such vile terms?

It's so- tacky.

Loving pain just seems too simple, because you can never really love pain, not if you think about it. The sentence is so over used and has so little meaning behind it you could call it preposterous. It's bloody laughable, how people will use a phrase simply because they've heard it for as long as they remember. Most don't even grace the recipient of their insults with a moment to think their words through. To love pain would mean to see it as an an equal to joy, to be glad at its presence and expectant to its return, right? Then I truly cannot understand how it's even possible to find a person who can really appreciate pain in such a high regard to say they _love_ it.

When something hurts, it hurts and that's all there is to it. No one sees their hands bleeding and think of how happy they are that something's hurting them. No one looks at a wound they inflicted on someone else and smile because it fills their heart to the brink. Of every feeling you can get when being in the presence of suffering, joy is certainly not one of them.

How can you find bliss in something like pain? Whoever says they love it or accuses someone else of so is either lying or completely blind to what loving means.

Therefore no, I do not love pain.

I am, however, completely and entirely fascinated by it.

That's where my problems with modern society start, because the 'normal' reaction when faced with pain is repulsion. If it burns, pull yourself away from it because it'll hurt; If it's sharp, be careful not to cut yourself because it'll hurt; Don't be violent to other kids because they'll hurt if you are. Isn't it right? People are conditioned to act a certain way before they can even experience the alternatives. You learn to despise pain since before you even know what it is, that's the way it works. Unluckily for me, the first and most important word that has marked its way in my brain is 'torture' which inevitably comes hand in hand with the word 'hurt', so that fear isn't really as present in me as it should be.

All I know is that everything is meant to hurt at one point and the only way to endure it properly is by being prepared.

I know very little about the world where people believe in equality, even if that equality is so obviously inexistent, so it's normal that I don't fit in with any pre-established standards. Even now that my torturous days are behind me, there is no single day that passes in which I don't look at the people surrounding me and think about how they would look like if they were in pain. I remember myself screaming and can't help but wonder how do the rest of the people I know sound like when they scream. There's no night that I don't spend fantasizing on the way faces contort in agony, and not because it makes me happy but because it keeps me sane.

Yes, I know how ludicrous it seems that someone like me is talking about mental health when I am _so obviously_ lacking of it. But as silly as it may sound, I firmly believe sanity should be a given thing and not something we should try to achieve so fervently. Why is it nessesary to try so hard? The people who aren't completely terrified of me say I'm ok, only a little disturbed the by hellish past that still haunts my every dream. They say I'll grow it off, that I don't need help because everyone is a little twisted inside and it's only normal given the fact that I'm still _just a boy_.

I'd love to hear their opinions after someone let them take a look inside my head for a single second.

Now, if what they say is true and every single person who is alive is relatively unsettled, how can anyone really tell me that I'm not mentally healthy? How do you know when the person who's offering the diagnosis isn't just a tad bit crazier than you? It isn't normal to want people suffering around me, that much I can understand. It is wrong to hurt people and it is wrong to be interested by people when they're in pain.

What I don't understand is-

_Why?_

"Do I trouble you?" I ask as we walk back to my bedroom, the rhythmic echo of the sound my boots make against the floor has me smiling when I notice the volume is just slightly louder than the ones from my butler's polished, black shoes. At this hour, every sound seems sharp and clear so the rest of the mansion staff does its best to remain deathly quiet.

Clumsy Hanna is probably shaking in her room and keeping herself from batting a single eyelash so I won't hear her, it's almost entertaining.

The only source of light in the hallway is the gold candelabra my companion carries with him as we walk. It usually wouldn't be enough to make me feel relaxed but tonight, I'm troubled by things a little more important than a dark atmosphere.

He doesn't answer my question and I sigh, too used his lack of speech to be surprised.

"Claude" I turn to find his eyes and indeed, they're on me. Not like I expected them to be anywhere else, he's always staring at me quietly, like a true spider making sure it's future meal stays in his line of sight and at arm's reach all the time.

I wish I could say he's as attached to me as I am to him but I'd be lying, his intentions towards me aren't as innocent as mine.

…and if you take into account how little innocent my own intentions are, then you might learn something about how awful _he_ can be.

Determined to break the flow of his movements in any way I find possible, I chuckle and stop walking so he'll bump into my back. I know he could have easily avoided the contact, but he still grants me my wish and lets my back meet his chest for a small moment to break the momentum of our small journey.

"Sorry" I mutter and titter, resuming the walk casually without sparing him a single other glance.

Yes, I know it's childish. Then again, I _am_ a child, something even I fail to remember at times. I should be allowed to stomp and cry for attention if that's what I wanted, wasn't that was every other boy did at my age?

His expression never wagers. He pushes his glasses back into perfect place and his legs regain their previous pace behind me slowly, like a true moving corpse. It's making my mind go into overdrive once more and I start breathing a little shallower in discomfort.

_How come everybody else gets to be sane while I sink deep and deeper into insanity every day?_

Claude opens the door to my bedroom just before my feet cross the threshold. The elegance and speed he moves in always amazes and disturbs me at the same time. I know I've gotten used to Claude's aid to the point where I saw him not as my servant or my tool, but as a true, palpable extension of my body. I know that if Claude hadn't been there to open the door, I would have bumped face first into the wood. The realization of how truly handicapped I was without him wasn't precisely new, but it's funny to notice how little it bothers me.

I love it, that he and his perfect timing were always focused on me, It isn't very good for my already strained mental health but it's just the way it is.

I stand before my bed and turn around to watch him move, placing the candelabrum in a small table so it illuminates the whole room dimly. He walks to the dresser and pulls out a silk shirt that I recognize as what I usually sleep in.

"I might not need it tonight" I say and smile, watching out for his reaction. Expectedly, he has none, even as he kneels in front of me and starts slowly taking my coat off, followed closely by my vest and bow tie. It's like he doesn't even hear me when I speak and it angers me. I can feel my mind slowly slipping back to that place where anxiousness and panic creeps in. I want to wrap my hands around his neck and squeeze as hard as my fingers let me, if only to see his expression when I do so. I can almost feel my fingers itching to do it, even if I knew well how futile it is to try to attack a demon when your odds of surviving said attack are as slim as mine.

I want him to hurt.

Simple because pain seems to be the only emotion in this world that is always real, without exceptions.

Everything else you can fake. Happiness, sadness, anger… even love. All it takes is a few forced laughs and a lot of carefully staged tears to make people seem as malleable as a handful of wet clay.

Just look at me, I'm the master at faking things. I've acted out all existent emotions and mastered their essence with utter perfection. I've manipulated people with a blink of an eye and will probably continue to do so for as long as it is convenient for me. And if it was so easy for me, a fourteen year old boy with no life experience, then how effortless must it be for the people I face and talk to every day? How simple must it be to have the world in the palm on your hand just because you've trained your body into feeling things?

It's all synthetic. The world around us is completely synthetic and everybody seems so content with it. Have you ever wondered what it would be like if no one ever said a lie? Do people like their carefully constructed society so much that they need it to be spotless in order for them to keep on pretending?

It's all lies and games.

Claude's expression stays untouched even as I stand naked in front of him. He only folds my clothes neatly and puts them aside. God, how I want to do something to break his composure, how I want to mark that flawless skin in front of me, it's maddening.

I stop his hand when he reaches out to my night shirt and his eyes go straight to mine, questioning. By night time, I'm usually too tired to argue with anything and I stay silent while he dresses me, giving him the peace and quiet he probably longs for all day when I'm babbling about this and that , however, I feel very uneasy. My mind has been racing in circles from early morning to late in the afternoon and apparently, it isn't quite ready to stop.

Is Claude sane too or is he just pretending for my sake? He is a demon, right? As one, he must have seen enough unsettling things to drive a saint mad.

My hands rise as if on their own accord and take rest against the sides of my servant's face, fingers feeling chilling, smooth skin underneath them. I smile and look at him for a moment, eyes lidded and content with the sight before them. There is sure something incredibly fascinating about Claude as well, enough to let me overlook my abnormal attachment to him in favor of the curiosity I feel about everything that involves who he is and what he does.

He treats me like royalty but he still wishes to feed from me like a beast in the end, it's unquestionably like offering a convict the banquet of his life as his last meal before sending him to hang. He'll do everything I desire and tend to my every wish, but in return-

"Claude" I say, fingers still petting his face much too sweetly. I am well aware that he is never fooled by my act, he knows the only word you can use to describe my so called innocence is 'bullshit' and still acts like everything I say and do around strange people is completely genuine. He pretends for me even when I don't ask him to, it's like he knows know how to act and when to do it so bloody accurately he doesn't even need instructions from me. It's oddly romantic in a way…that he knows what I want all the time and is so willing to offer it to me.

It's certainly one of the things I like the most about him.

There I go again, trying to find a heart in a demon's body. Call it wishful thinking, but to me is pretty inevitable by now. I keep seeing all this sings of true affection in him that, to tell the truth, probably aren't real. Even with this knowledge, I remain incessantly attempting to read between the lines and see something else in the way he acts when he's with me.

Hey, if the way I am and think are considered evil, then his actions in contrast to his true intentions should be considered criminal.

Then again, he _is_ a demon whereas I-

I'm just one young and fragile kid, right?

"Yes?" He asked, not moving his face away from my tender touch but certainly not leaning into it, completely unaffected by me. At first, I thought this behavior was only him being professional and treating our contract like nothing besides busyness. Lately, I'm thinking it's his true personality, always stoic and distant even when I stand there, completely uncovered in front of his eyes and merely a step away.

…Completely and utterly vulnerable.

It's almost an invitation, one I'll never offer out loud and one he will positively never accept unless he's ordered to. I'm not saying I want him to tremble and stutter like Hanna, but it would sure be nice to see his mask crack for a second, even if it was to attack me or- well, anything else really.

Even if it came with a less than warm face, I'd still feel like it was me who made him loose his cool.

"Will it hurt?" I murmur, taking note on how the unsteady candle lights made his face look. His calm, bored gold eyes look like jewels from where I stand, protected only by the thin glasses of his spectacles. I almost want to touch them.

"What are you referring to, master?" He asks me in a total neutral voice, one that still manages to stir so many different reactions in me.

However he may act, I know he's never _truly _unaffected by me. After all, I am his meal and he said so himself.

Over everything else and quoting his words, he wants to greedily devour me in the end. It makes me different, in a way. He wouldn't have come to me if I was nothing special, there has to be something inside me that will change that expression, even if it's not in a positive way. Because until the day the contract is done, I have a considerable amount of leverage over him. I could toy and play with him at my will, right? He couldn't really refuse if it came with an order, could he?

It is a contract, after all.

I could dance and tease him to his limits if I wanted to, consequences be damned.

It'll be more than worth it if he shows me something deeper than what I see in him every day.

"When you eat me" I choose my words carefully, trying to make them sound as child-like as possible, mainly because I know that, even though he doesn't mind me playing a part for the outside world, it displeases him greatly when I pretend to be innocent while we're alone. "Will it hurt?" My voice sounds curious instead of actually wary or scared.

"More than anything you've ever felt before" He speaks truthfully, because what is Claude if not bluntly honest.

"I doubt so" I chuckle humorlessly and let my hands fall to his shoulders at last. Pain is nothing new to my world; darkness is nothing new to my world.

"You'd be surprised" He says with a tint of humor and a velvety soft voice. He's probably mocking me in his head because of how sadly mistaken I am.

And just like that, all doubt leaves the window for me concerning his sanity. Yes, I am sure of it, even with the years he has on him and after participating in a million different nightmarish activities, Claude is still sane.

…Unlike me, who has only been in this world long enough to be considered a kid and is already in the process of becoming a lunatic. Sanity is to me like a crystal ball I can see but never quite get to touch, like everybody but I can grasp that sense of contentment in the plastic world of lies and deceit we live in. You tell me, is it really that damnable that I simply cannot see what everyone is so pleased with?

I can't stand it.

I really can't stand it.

"I don't plan to die for a while" I continue, the intimacy between us isn't broken by the loss of contact. I start seeing something flash across his eyes and for once, I'm hopeful. "Will you really wait?"

He's quick to answer. "I will serve you until the day you exhale your last breath"

If only I could fool myself into blindly believing him.

He doesn't smile, but I don't want him too anyway.

Smiling is the easiest thing to fake, and it's what I hate the most about people.

-Which brings me back to my first subject…

_Pain_

You can't fake pain, that's why I'm so intrigued by it. Someone who's trying to feign pain will never succeed simply because it's the most real emotion a person can feel. False pain always looks empty and there's no exception for this rule. Real pain is evident in every cell of a person's being and if only for a second, it leaves them honest and bare to the eyes of whomever is witnessing.

"Don't you want to take an early bite?" I taunt him and smirk wider, turning my head to the side so more of my skin is exposed to him. He looks like he is actually trying to not indulge into whatever it is he wants to do, and although it is not an ideal reaction, it feels like a small victory for me. Maybe it's gratitude for his services or maybe it was just the notion that he's probably been holding himself from being a true demon towards me for quite a while now, but there is something about him that just makes me want to let him do anything he pleases, even if it means hurting me.

Can you call that love?

Even if any close encounter with him would probably mean physical and emotional suffering for me, does the fact that I still want it mean that I'm in love with Claude? Or is it really the suffering that I'm in love with?

No.

I don't love pain, I _need_ it.

"You are tired, master" He sighs and reaches for my nightshirt again, unfolding it carefully before taking my hands and pushing them through the holes in the sleeves. His eyes lose the feral quality they acquired just a few seconds ago. There goes my victory. "You need sleep"

Claude is unreachable, which only makes me want to reach to him more.

"I want you to hurt me" I whisper as he starts buttoning the silk article, covering my bare chest and straying away from the intimacy I had been craving from him.

Pain, one way or another makes me feel safe. No one can fake being in pain and no one can cause direct pain to others without meaning it.

It's real

How is that so hard to comprehend?

I know he wants to oblige into what I'm offering but it's also evident that he won't. Demons have way too much self control to be teased into breaking their own rules, I assume. If only I could get him to bite me, or scratch my arms- anything, then I'd stop feeling the panic I've been under the whole day.

I've been alone the whole day even if there has been at least one person by my side at all times. Does that make sense?

People fade to black with the blink of an eye. All you can really expect from somebody else are brief moments of lies and abuse that will leave you drained and bitter. And the people who matter never stick around long enough to make up for their absence.

So there I am every single day, sitting around people who don't matter, looking into their perfectly sculpted faces and perfectly rehearsed personalities.

Soon, before my eyes, they stop blinking.

Soon, before my eyes, they stop breathing.

And soon, all I'm left with is a room full of porcelain dolls that move around me lifelessly, all watching, waiting for me to do something they can mechanically react to. Flawless, cold and always observant as it if all depended on me, as if I'm the only one who's using oxygen the way it's meant to be used.

It drives me absolutely insane.

I'm scared.

"Claude!" I yell but he stays untouched, finishing his task of getting me ready and continuing with the task of preparing the bed I'm supposed to lie in.

I want to pull at my hair until I tear it out and scream. Scream until someone reacts the right way, until someone stops dusting off the shallow imperfections in my body and is willing to dig deeper into that place inside me where the true dirt lies.

I need to see their pain

I need to see their faces contort in honesty and truth to remind me that they're alive.

I need to see the cracks in their uncorrupted, handmade masks so that I can feel like I'm not alone.

Only then I feel like my heart is not the only one that beats.

Only then do I feel like they are real, and not just another mirage that will fade into the background with the next wind storm.

…like everyone else.

He stands up and looks down at my desperate face for a second before taking my hand and leading me to my bed. Once I sit there, dejectedly staring at the floor, he takes off one pristine white glove from his elegant hand and places two long fingers under my chin, turning my face up to look at him.

"Until the day you cease to exist, I exist to serve you" He says "I will be your shadow at all times if that is what you desire". Even if the way it sounded wasn't tender or warm, I could feel my heart start slowing down from its previous hyperactive state and I could feel my body stop shivering when breathing became easier. How did he manage to do this all the time? No matter how anxious I was, a single word from his lips could make me relax in an instant, even if it was completely devoid of emotion. It's like he spoke directly to my tortured mind and calmed me down from the inside out.

And no matter how he said or meant it, his words still sounded like 'I'll never leave you alone'.

It still sounded like everything I needed to hear from him.

I lay down on the bed carefully and he puts his glove back on before covering my body with the sheets gently. I turn on my side, facing him and take hold of the pillow next to me, hugging it tightly as I watch him walk away.

"Stay" I call out just before he opens the door and sigh in relief as he doesn't move further. He knows I hate the dark and always leaves the candles burning so I can sleep, but tonight it isn't enough. All the candles in the world wouldn't be enough.

He nods and fixes up his glasses one more time. "Yes, your highness"

I am not a sadist.

I'm merely protecting whatever is left of my sanity and if every single person in the world feels the obligation to despise me for it, that's their problem to deal with.

Because it's a price I'm undoubtedly willing to take.

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A/N: So well, this fic is kind of pointless but it kind of- forced its way out of me. Every time I see a fictional character that's this mentally unstable, I can't help but loving them instantly (You got to admit they're the most interesting), therefore Alois came on screen with his bipolar attitude and I just flailed.

I love him, seriously… The things people bash him for (Being mean, sick, scary and slutty) are the very same reasons why I'm completely smitten with him! (And they're older now- I don't have to feel like I'm supporting pedophilia or anything anymore- even if both are still underage D:) In a way, I just see his character and it seems a lot more- human (?) than Ciel. And I adore Ciel with all my heart, don't get me wrong. I just feel that such a young boy with such a hellish past would never grow up to be so sane and cordial. Alois's character is a little more realistic if you put it together with his past.

Besides, come on you guys… Instead of one bratty, snobbish, rich boy, now we get TWO! I fail to see how that's a bad thing! (And the tension between Sebastian and Claude is just- so amazing!)

Anyway, much love to everyone who took the time to read this! Leave a review if you feel like making me smile(:D)!


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